


Discussions in Proliferation

by Shameless_Dakini



Series: Margin to Center [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:12:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9063706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shameless_Dakini/pseuds/Shameless_Dakini
Summary: conversations and choices





	

**Author's Note:**

> conversations and choices

“What was that about?” Harry asked toweling himself off from his shower before he stepped into his pajamas.

 

“What was what about?” Ginny asked over her shoulder brushing out her hair with her fingers on the bed. Harry lost himself gazing at that perfect shade of red for a moment answering, “With Teddy, during pudding.”

 

Ginny sighed and flopped back onto the pillow. It was Wednesday and therefore Teddy’s night at Stinchcombe. The boy, as usual, had arrived at the house after school. After homework, a bit of flying, dinner, pudding, and a bedtime story read by Harry, Teddy had finally fallen asleep in his room. Harry eased himself into the bed and lay on his side looking down at his girlfriend, head propped up on his elbow. Ginny eased out another sigh and Harry waited patiently.

 

Ginny had subtly but persistently queried Teddy about his friends and peers at school with a liberal amount of affection and forehead kisses thrown in. She had restated to him multiple times during the evening that if he ever felt alone or wanted to talk to someone he could always call her or Harry. She had seemed particularly happy to find that Teddy had _loads_ of friends and three best friends. Harry felt that questioning was a bit… _much_ for it to be simply Ginny’s friendly, effusive, personality caring about Teddy.

 

So. Harry patiently waited.

 

Ginny hadn’t thought Harry had noticed her chat with Teddy after dinner so hadn’t prepared herself for how to answer. If she had known this chat was coming she would have used story time and Harry’s shower time to collect her thoughts more logically. She had realized halfway through her chat with Teddy that she was projecting but by then it had been too late. Besides, it never hurt to check in with a child and make sure he was happy, safe, and secure- emotionally as well as physically! 

 

“Tom Riddle was my first friend when I was only a little older than Ted.” Ginny confessed to the ceiling.

 

Harry blinked in surprise and a little revulsion.

 

“ _Gi-“_ Harry” she interrupted firmly. _This_ is why she wanted to prepare.

 

“He _was_ my first friend,” she said turning to him with a sad little shrug. 

 

Harry’s feelings must have shown on his face because she rolled her eyes and added, “Its not your fault you know.”

Harry made a vague sort of frustrated snort.

 

“You shouldn’t have needed to write in a diary.”

 

“I was _used_ to writing in a dairy remember? It was loneliness really.”

 

Harry’s brow furrowed momentarily. They had been a _them_ long enough (a year), that he knew about her girlhood poetry, the stuffed animal filled plays, and the journals she wrote in before Hogwarts. But still, to him that wasn’t quite the same as the diary she so felt she needed her first year. Ginny, unlike him was a born extrovert, a social butterfly, and always accumulating friends. It was always surprising to him that she may not have always been that way.

 

Ginny reading him correctly, turned to her side and explained,

“Pre-teen hormones, having to wear shabby boys robes, _everyone_ already knowing who I was and expecting _something._ My first magic happened at the Ministry you know and it was…big so _everyone_ expected something. _And_ literally everyone of my brothers had made a name for themselves, even Ron!…so I just…it was a lot for an eleven-year old.”

 

“I always felt you wore poverty and being ‘another’ Weasley better than Ron” Harry murmured.

 

“I usually did, but…lets just say my first night at Hogwarts wasn’t particularly inconspicuous for the family.”

 

“Sorry”

 

“Not your fault,” Ginny responded automatically with a little grin remembering her mothers howler after the flying car incident. “Even without the car, I was still wrestling with the shabby boy’s robes, being yet another Weasley and all that. I mean, first years are shy in general but that first night in Hogwarts was the first time I really realized...how poor I was and how unprepared I was for the world”

 

Harry snaked his hand down to rest on the curve of Ginny’s hip under the covers and gazed contemplatively for a moment.

 

“Is that why you’ve always been against having loads of children?” He asked boldly.

 

Ginny blinked back startled and then after a moment of looking shocked raised her eyebrows with a curious askance at Harry.

 _Really?_ She asked with her eyes, _Do we really want to have that conversation now?_

Vaguely she realized she always assumed that this was a conversation that would happen after they got married…whenever that…happened. It was sort of an unsaid assumption that they would but so far, no proposing had occurred. On the other hand, she already considered herself essentially married to Harry anyway. They had been living together for a year. She loved him, and well, he was very much her end all be all. She took her future with him as a given. He would, _of course,_ be the father of her children.

 

Ginny quirked her eyebrow in question again.

Harry met her gaze unerringly and infinitismally nodded his head understanding her unasked question perfectly.

Ginny took in a slow breath.

  

“I always wondered what it would have been like to have a sibling,” Harry offered innocuously.

 

Ginny gave him a small smile, “I, uh…I never said I only wanted one.”

Throwing in the towel on abstraction and acknowledging that yes, they were having the conversation about children. _Their_ potential future children.

 

Harry took a deep breath and prompted, “But…”

 

“But I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like if my parents had chosen to have fewer children or had them further apart. Would we have gotten more attention like Bill and Charlie did? Would we all have grown up with fewer personal angst and issues? Would all our books and bags and clothes been less...shabby? We would have all competed less for attention?”

 

Harry squeezed Ginny’s hip, “Gin, we’re both pretty wealthy”

 

It wasn’t an arrogant statement, it was a simple fact. Ginny technically earned more than Harry at present but was by no means as wealthy as Harry. They had sorted out and discussed their finances and agreed on a day-to-day budget. While they hadn’t entirely combined their finances the way truly married couples did, they did recently decide to create a shared savings account. Admittedly, at the time they had created this account, the conversation had skirted around the end goal. Instead they had both been fine with a vague “for the future.” Ginny supposed hammering out children probably had a lot to do with that future and savings.

 

“Yes but having children are still expensive- especially when you have a lot. And theres still the constantly being pregnant, lack of individual attention for each kid, and…I dunno enforcing discipline and making sure no one is forgotten and...stuff,” Ginny finally replied.

 

“No one said you had to be constantly pregnant! You don’t have to be pregnant at all!” Harry retorted scandalized.

 

Ginny sincerely hoped he wasn’t alluding to surrogacy.

If anyone was carrying Harry Potter’s children it was her! If anyone was giving birth to Harry Potter’s heirs it better damn well be her as well! She hadn’t realized she felt this way until this very moment but she supposed that settled that. Though perhaps he meant those test-tube babies that muggles talked about? _No_ Ginny realized. She _wanted_ to be pregnant. She wanted to carry _his_ kids. Granted she didn’t want all this right now or in the immediate future but…

 

Harry, unaware of Ginny’s sudden internal lightbulb added deadpan, “ _Malfoy_ , was a wealthy only-child who had a _lot_ of attention”

 

Ginny blinked in shock and choked, “I cannot _believe_ you even dared to compare my children to Malfoy!”

 

Harry, confronted by her truly horrified and adorably outraged expression let out a hearty laugh and pulled her into his chest.

 

“So.... _Our_ Child _ren?”_

 

“Oh bother!” Ginny huffed out and rolled herself over so she was straddling Harry.

 

Swatting some hair out of her fact she said,

“Fine, fine. Alright, I’m only saying this once. Yes Harry Potter, I want to have child _ren_. No, I don’t know how many exactly or _when_. But no more than four. M _aximum._ AND I want them spaced out! None of this Ron and Ginny are practically Irish twins business! Deal?”

 

“Deal.” Harry said and pulled her down to kiss and flipped them over so that Ginny was pinned below him.

 

Very little was said for a good while after.

 

-

Much later, Harry lay on the bed in the sated after-glow.

 

“Gin?” he asked softly, waiting for feeling to come back into his sprawled out extremities.

 

“Mrpph” came from the flame colored bundled lodged on his side.

 

“I would have been fine with one.”

 


End file.
